How Some Greek Geeks Are Boosting Civic Engagement In Harsh Times

Can civic engagement platforms help a nation come out of its worst crisis in at least a century? Not alone - for sure. Greece's economic crisis, fuelled by the financial bounds imposed by the European Commission, is so deep and harsh that no technology, advanced as it may be, can solve the situation. But, when jobs are scarce (unemployment rate is at 26.7 percent, 56.8 for youth) and the future is so uncertain, empowering and engaging citizens in some kind of positive action could help them at least regain a sense of pride.

That's why projects like City of Errors and Vouliwatch are worth telling.

City of Errors is a cross-media platform that tries to combine the documentary genre with the principles of mobile gaming in order to make problem solving an entertaining activity. The platform is made of two main components: the first it's a web-documentary series, called Life in a City full of Errors, that tells everyday stories on the problems of the city from the perspective of people who have chosen to deal with these problems.

The second, it's a mobile application for iOS that promotes citizens’ direct participation. After logging in to the app with their Facebook accounts, users can upload, categorize, geolocate and share photo-stories of the actions they engage in to fix their broken city, tagging them with keywords like #solidarity #equality #animal rights #education #get together #urban. The project's starting point, the original "city of errors", is Athens, one of the oldest, but also of the most polluted and noisy, metropolis of the developed world. But the app could be used anywhere in the world and adapted also to other contexts, as it's in English and uses the GPS of the smartphone to identify the user's location.

Of course, it's not easy to get such a project started in the current situation. The main issue is money. The team behind CoE has worked voluntarily for months now, but they can't go on indefinitely without support. They launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, not long ago, which raised $2,840, a little more than one tenth of the suggested goal.

"City of Errors can make an important contribution to the bourgeoning movement of solidarity and community initiatives in Greece - Westminster University's senior lecturer Anastasia Kavada, who also co-edits the Oi Polloi blog, says - Such projects range from community clinics and alternative currencies to seed banks and communal kitchens. Together they point to an ongoing shift in consciousness as people in Greece try to counter the destructive effects of the economic crisis by taking control of their communities through grassroots activism".

VouliWatch is another project recently born in Greece to boost civic engagement, but from a different angle. The focus in this case, is on political participation (Vouli means "Parliament" in Greek) rather than on everyday acts of kindness. "Our digital platform offers citizens the opportunity to publicly question MPs and MEPs - Vouliwatch MD, Stefanos Loukopoulos tells me in an email interview - and to hold their elected representatives accountable for their parliamentary activity. It is loosely modelled on similar initiatives that are already running successfully in other countries (Ireland, Luxemburg, Tunisia, Germany, France and Austria)".

Each MP and MEP has a devoted page on the website which details their biographical and contact details and their committee activity. Users can ask questions to their representative, and MPs and MEPs can post a public response, showing that they are actually working to fix big and small issues and that they do care for their constituencies, something not to be taken for granted in a country all too often been beset by scandals and corruption.

VouliWatch also aims at crowdsourcing legislation: users can try to influence the political debate by focusing the agenda on issues that users believe are important and are not being discussed widely. Ideas and proposals are collected on a Google map application and organized according to location or subject categories. Every month all submitted data is summarized in a report and sent to all MPs and MEPs. Although the project was launched a little less than a month ago (on March 16), and it's still in beta, the team of thirty-something year olds that is promoting it foresees a bright future.

"The idea has proved popular so far - Loukopoulos says - gaining interest from both politicians and the general public. We have 186 registered users, and have received 156 questions to MPs/MEPs, and we are currently working on engaging more with parliament. We have 3474 followers on Facebook and we have been approached for a number of interviews in the press. So all in all we’re very optimistic that this venture will be a welcome and useful tool, and that we will gain more traction as time goes on".

Below, a video that explains further how VouliWatch works:

I'm a freelance journalist covering technology for several outlets, both in English (Zdnet, techPresident) and Italian (La Stampa, l'Espresso, Corriere della Sera and others). I was a Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism fellow in 2013. You can find my research on j...